Establishing a Vocal Tone in the Mix [Excerpt]

Hey, what’s up, guys? David Glenn back for The Pro Audio Files and davidglennrecording.com.

This excerpt is going to come straight out of my membership site — it’s called The Mix Academy. Every month we get a set of multi-tracks, I mix it from start to finish. Every chord — if not the entire thing. I like to break it down in sections sometimes, but tutorials every single month breaking down my mix of the song, we have a private Facebook group, we have all kinds of great things going on over there.

Right now, I want to show you, we’ve got a dollar trial. It’s an entry. One buck gets you in for 30 days, you get to come in, try the site out. No harm, no foul. If you love it, we would love to have you. Love to be a part of the community.

If you don’t really care for it, maybe the songs aren’t your thing, it’s a buck to give it a shot. So would love to extend that invitation for you guys. If you’re watching this video, then you can go to themixacademy.com right now and sign up for a buck.

If you want to do the $27 monthly, it’s no contract, you can cancel at any time. You can do it for one month, $27, and you can pick any course you’d like for free. It’s a special bonus we do for members who do the $27 and just jump in.

And of course, there’s an annual membership where you get access to everything I’ve ever done at The Mix Academy and you get a free bonus course, you get a free custom mix critique, all kinds of incredible stuff with that.

So would just invite you to check that out. This tutorial, the excerpt, moving on over is going to be me working through kind of a trial and error thing to establish a vocal sound for this song. The song is “What You’re Going to Do,” it’s by the very talented group called “Mayfield” out of the UK.

I hope you guys enjoy this. So please check out The Mix Academy, enjoy the tutorial, and we’ll see you in the next one!

And then, it’s bothering me not having the vocal at level. So let’s go push that guy up.

[mix]

I did pull it into Melodyne, don’t be freaked out yet. I haven’t done anything with it.

[vocals]

So basic vocal chain here. What’s…

[vocals]

It’s not really being impacted by any of that stuff yet, so let’s go ahead and pull it.

[vocals]

I’m going to zoom out and see if I can see any crazy peaks in the vocals. Nothing really.

[vocals]

So this is about as much as I would want to use this first limiter here, and then I’m going to pull open some volume.

[laughs] That spring sounds awesome, but it needs to come down some, huh? Let’s add some clarity to her before — you know what, let me not do that, because I had a preset in mind from this Alloy 2. There is actually some really cool vocal presets in here, even though it’s not a vocal plug-in, necessarily. They have Nectar, which is specific to vocals.

The vocal down here, there’s like a raw, retro something. Where’s the retro vocal.

[mix]

Okay. I don’t care for the added top end. I’m going to pull that back a little bit.

[vocals]

I don’t know what I’m saying here.

So okay. My plug-in here is impacting that preset quite a bit, so I’m going to just pull this in a little bit.

[mix]

Okay, so there’s nothing… There’s nothing wrong with throwing these plug-ins on and kind of tweaking things and seeing where you can go. I had a thought in my mind, it’s not really working, so I’m just going to ditch it, and I am going to maybe switch over and find a preset that works over in Nectar.

I’m going to keep it mono, because I thought effect wise, I thought maybe we’ll keep it a little more direct. I keep looking at it because of the screen. My presets are not here for me, so I’m going to load that. Save setting as… DGR default, bam, replace it. Then come in here and set as the user default.

I like nothing on. So then we’re going to come over — let’s try — they’ve got some categories in Nectar too, we’ve got Alternative, Indie, Classical, Folk, and Jazz, Country, Dance, Hip Hop, Rock, Soul and R&B, Special Effects Utility… Let’s see if there’s a — Rockabilly slap. That sounds fun. I don’t know that it sounds fitting, but…

[mix]

I think his had a slap delay.

[mix]

Not quite as intense. Let’s pull the percentage back a little bit, like, 15.

It sounds good for now. Let’s rock it. Let me come down to that spring.

[mix]

I like that last bit there.

[mix]

Put a little bit of gentle chorus, a little bit of Dimension D, let’s see what this sounds like.

[mix]

Still got a little bit of movement. I’m just going to go crazy here. I’m just stacking plug-ins.

Let’s throw the Devil-Loc Deluxe for a little bit of a kiss from this guy here.

David Glenn

David Glenn is a producer/engineer/musician based out of Orlando, FL. Credits include: Pablo Villatoro, Blanca Callahan (Group 1 Crew), Aimee Allen, and more. Learn more and get in touch at davidglennrecording.com.